Synthesis Reflection
Precis of Flight Path:
One of my educational goals from the onset of my career has been to comprehensively utilize digital applications in a pedagogically sound manner within my classroom. This strategy would inform my educational program, as well as support student learning. My passion for technology has also spurred my advocacy for this medium to be adopted within schools in a fiscally responsible and pedagogically sound manner. In recent years I have begun to critically analyze whether using digital tools in the classroom would be the best possible strategy to support and enhance student learning. Therefore, developing a framework which examines technology tools for their optimal benefits to a learning environment, is something that I wanted to build. As I constructed my LMS course through Moodle, I examined its functionality to try to identify if this platform could support the identification of student strengths and weakness in their overall learning. Armed with this knowledge I could then target specific digital strategies to support, enhance and transform student learning. I have always characterized the ‘MET’ learning environment as a supportive and collaboratively dynamic space, where I’ve always been able to enhance my learning through meaningful discourse. This method of learning will ultimately support my efforts to comprehend the various digital tools that I will be exposed to in this course.
Reflection on E-learning Toolkit Activities:
I thought that all the e-learning toolkit activities were very well constructed in that there wasn’t too much text information to digest. I really appreciated this because I wanted to actively explore and ‘play’ with all the tools as thoroughly as I could, without having to read a manual of sorts. I was surprised in how I viewed the synchronous communication tool called chat room. I merely had thought that it was on par with the typical format of today’s email clients. I hadn’t participated that often within chat rooms over the years, perhaps because of the reputation that they had earned in the 1990’s as a space filled with inappropriate people, saying inappropriate things.
However, within the context of a graduate level course, this tool made perfect sense to me, in how it could elevate educational dialogue between peers. Within the context of a learning environment, elevating student dialogue in the pursuit of meaningful learning can be very helpful to a student’s personal growth. Specifically, and perhaps I am mistaken, but I considered chat rooms an almost obsolete media tool. My students still comment on how they use MSN, albeit not as much as they use to. They have all moved over to the more popular social tools, like Facebook. However, constructing my LMS course with a synchronous tool embedded within it, has changed my outlook on the usefulness of chat rooms.
I was really impressed with how versatile a Wiki could be across all subject areas. There have been many instances in my classroom where I’ve had students collaboratively build knowledge on a large poster board, or some other pen and paper format. Sometimes, the inability for some group members to get close enough to the poster board was the reason that their participation with the activity would drop off. I considered this as I learned about the functionality of the Wiki tool. It seems so simple to have students share their knowledge on this type of digital canvass. It’s a motivating and useful tool to help students actively participate in the creation of knowledge. In my experience, some students would not see this as learning, only having fun with the laptops at school. This comment would be all that I would need to further carry them down the technological road to enhanced learning.
Applying SECTIONS to Self-Assess My E-portfolio: I have chosen self-assess my LMS course using the SECTIONS framework.
Students: what is known about the students – or potential students – and the appropriateness of the technology for this particular group or range of students?
I decided to develop an LMS course that would serve as a professional development tool for teachers at my school. The course would demonstrate to teachers how they could use SMART Board technology within their numeracy programs. In a sense, my colleagues could be viewed as students when it comes to their participation with this course. I have always believed that as educators we should embrace the perspective of learner, because it enriches our own practice, ultimately benefiting student learning by our enhanced knowledge and experience. At my school most teachers are eager to try to integrate technology within their educational practice. The success rate varies depending on teacher comfort with various digital tools, and their prior experience with the technology. I have noticed recently that teachers have begun to work in technology teams, usually consisting of two teachers. Teachers have told me that they feel that their technology lessons would be enhanced if they were working in collaboration with one another. As I brainstormed my thoughts on developing an LMS proposal, I thought of supporting these technology teams by building an introductory site that would help them integrate technology, specifically within their numeracy programs. In my discussions with some of my colleagues, they expressed a desire to have materials available to them that would support their initiative to use technology within their classrooms. I, therefore, am very excited to unveil my site to them. The course is a beginning, and I plan to expand the content that is presently available on the site, to include additional grades in the future. In fact, I will be creating a course for my students this fall as well. I plan to develop a site that will be centred around ‘Literature Circles’. I am very excited because I see tremendous learning opportunities being created by offering course work through the Moodle format.
Ease of use and reliability: How easy is it for both teachers and students to use? How reliable and well tested is the technology?
After using the Moodle platform for the past 12 weeks I have become very comfortable with the technology. I have used the Moodle ‘help’ documents extensively to troubleshoot issues with my LMS course. I have also used various search engines to further explore the functionality of the Moodle platform. I have downloaded a copy of Moodle, and setup the LMS on a personal computer that I own. I will explore the logistics of hosting the platform from one of my personal computers this school year. I want to be sure that I will be able to utilize Moodle within my practice, in case the district rejects my proposal to have Moodle hosted on my school’s web-site. It is my impression that teachers at my school will be able to easily navigate the Moodle interface. Teachers have worked with various multimedia tools that are present within my course, and I feel that they will grasp the concept rather quickly. As I will be teaching the same students for a second consecutive year, I know that they will find the technology very engaging, and useful for their studies. Most of my students will be able to construct meaningful knowledge when they are guided on how to properly build their own Moodle course. Again, I am very excited because I see the potential that Moodle can have on improving student learning.
The SMART Board will need to be introduced to teachers over several weeks of in-services, and after school learning sessions. Having had the SMART Board demonstrated to me, I can say that the technology has a minor learning curve to be grasped by teachers. It is a piece of technology that can be very helpful within a teacher’s educational program, if it is fully embraced by the teacher as a viable tool that can support and enhance student learning.
Costs: What is the cost structure of each technology? What is the unit cost per learner?
As the Moodle platform has no fees in connection with its use by educators, I am very happy that I will be able to implement the technology for my colleagues. There are also no fees that are attached for student use, be it at home or in school. There are services (http://www.siteground.com/lms-hosting.htm) that will host my Moodle course(s) for a nominal monthly fee. There are other hosting services (http://www.e-socrates.org/) that will do the same without any cost to me. I will choose the free hosting service if I cannot load my course onto a district server. The SMART Board will need to be purchased by the school. As of June 5, 2009, a 60” SMART Board would cost the school approximately $1330 (excluding tax). This is a one-time purchase, with the ‘notebook’ software included in the overall price.
Teaching and Learning: What kinds of learning are needed? What instructional approaches will best meet these needs? What are the best technologies for supporting this teaching and learning?
Staff at my school regularly use the districts communication portal named First Class. This client/server email and online conferencing system has collaborative functions that staff are familiar with. My LMS course is mostly a point and click environment, with discussion forums that require text to be input through typing from a keyboard. I believe that staff possess the necessary skills to be able to navigate my LMS course. Teachers will need some face-to-face time with Moodle, where they will be able to spend some time exploring the user interface. Teachers would benefit from regularly scheduled in-services, where they would be supported while they learn the Moodle platform. Teachers would also benefit through group demonstrations on how to properly utilize the interactive whiteboard. Teachers could go online to the vendor’s web-site and view the many flash based movies on how to operate a SMART Board. One strategy that I believe would expedite teacher training with SMART technology, would be to have students learn the Board, and then teach teachers on how to use it. Students would become experts with the technology, further enhancing their knowledge, and empowering them to take more ownership for their own learning journey.
Interactivity: What kind of interaction does this technology enable?
The LMS course will give teachers the means to communicate with each other through synchronous and asynchronous tools. From chat rooms to threaded discussion forums, teaching staff will be able to collectively support and build knowledge together. Teachers will discover that the SMART Board can also be interactive. Teachers will be able to activate applications, and input information to various applications by touching the whiteboard’s surface.
Organizational issues: What are the organizational requirements, and the barriers to be removed, before this technology can be used successfully? What changes in organization need to be made?
The main impediment that I see with the adoption of the Moodle platform within my district will be whether or not the IT department will permit Moodle to be hosted on the school’s server. Each school in Surrey now has 2 servers. One is a Windows based, and the other an Apple (OSX) based system. Hopefully, the district will permit one of those servers to be used to host the Moodle software. I am on the district’s team of technology facilitators and I could bring this issue to their attention for discussion. The administrator for technology education in Surrey could be contacted and the issue of Moodle discussed. This behaviour would only proceed if the district rejected my proposal to host Moodle on the school’s server.
Novelty: How new is this technology?
Moodle is an open-source platform which has been around since 1999 . It was created by Martin Dougiamas, a WebCT administrator at Curtin University, Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle).
Moodle was designed to help teachers create online courses where students could have meaningful discussions with one another as they learned the content together. The SMART Board was developed in 1991 by David Martin and Nancy Knowlton (http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/About+Us/Company+Info/20+years/). They wanted to develop a collaborative solution that would be used in classrooms to support interactive learning.
Speed: How quickly can courses be mounted with this technology? How quickly can materials be changed?
It took me a mere 10 minutes to mount my initial course onto a server at the University of British Columbia. The Moodle application was already hosted at the University of British Columbia, and I just logged into my account and began building my course. I didn’t have to use an FTP application to upload my course media, the transfer function was seamless and built right into the Moodle platform. Modifying, adding, or deleting content from my course was just as easy to accomplish. I particularly liked how after editing the course with administrator privileges, I could then quickly switch over to the student mode, and view what students would experience when interacting with the course content.
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My Next Steps:
I have really enjoyed working through the various Modules of this course. This is my fifth course, and the first, where the instructor released weekly Modules as students completed the previous one. I felt that this was an excellent strategy, to help guide and manage students, as they worked together to building knowledge. I will continue to develop my LMS course, and plan to build additional courses in other subject areas. I don’t see my Moodle experience as a means to completely convert my entire educational program into an online course. Instead, I see Moodle as a compliment to my program. No one strategy can support the varying learning styles of all students, therefore, I believe that the addition of a Moodle experience for my students will be a positive addition to their educational journey. One area of practice that I will focus on with urgency will be to develop a database of digital tools that I can begin to analyze by using the SECTIONS framework developed by (Bates & Poole, 2003). I was impressed with the database of tools that were on the http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools web-site. As I explored each tool, I quickly visualized how I might use the tool within my practice. By using the SECTIONS framework I can start to filter the tools through a matrix that can inform my practice as to the efficacy of these tools.
References:
Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.
Moodle. (n.d.). Retrieved July 29, 2009, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle
SMART. (n.d.). Retrieved July 26, 2009, from http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/About+Us/Company+Info/20+years/
Story Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved July 24, 2009, from http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools